State-led creative/cultural city making and its contestations in East Asia: A multi-scalar analysis of the entrepreneurial state and the creative class

In East Asia, a top-down discourse of making creative/cultural cities, accompanied by widespread local state-led campaigns and their contestations, are now in full swing. ‘Creative/culture-oriented’ local governments equipped with various entrepreneurial strategies, as well as the grassroots creative class, have emerged as two distinct forces shaping new urban spaces that differ significantly from their Western counterparts. East Asian cities have thus gained value for the revisiting and interrogation of established academic debates regarding creative/cultural cities, which until recently were based primarily on Western experiences. This themed issue thus aims to present a fresh and enriched understanding of the making of creative/cultural cities in East Asia and the emerging contestations based on two sets of interrelated analyses: first, a multi-scalar analysis of the role of the state in the making of creative/cultural cities and various forms of creative and cultural clusters; and second, the discontent and resistance of the creative class and wider social groups against top-down strategies. We hope that this concerted effort can contribute to the unravelling of the complexity and peculiarity of the policies, practices, outcomes, and, especially, contestations of East Asia's creative/cultural city making efforts. More importantly, we expect this collective effort to be added to the growing body of work challenging Western urban theories, which can be of limited utility in understanding urbanism elsewhere.